1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for communicating data, and in particular to a system and method for redundant communications of data along a plurality of communication paths.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, home entertainment systems have been networked in order to provide media content to a wide variety of devices around the home. For example, a satellite television receiver, sometimes known as an Integrated Receiver Decoder (IRD) or Set Top Box (STB) may provide media programs and information received from the headend via the satellite to other devices in the home such as smartphones, computers, digital video recorders (DVRs), or other displays. Further, home networking systems may accept data from other sources (e.g. security cameras, door sensors, burglar alarms and the like) and using the network connectivity often utilized by IRDs, provide data from those sources to entities external to the home.
Preferably, the bandwidth of such networking systems is high, so as to permit the reproduction of high definition (HD) program materials, and of minimal latency, so that each of the home devices receives the media program at essentially the same time. Because intermittent interruption of such media programs is a major annoyance, it is also desirable that the data together comprising the media program(s) be delivered to the devices with high reliability.
In order to provide optimal operator class networking in the home for content such as television, security video, audio, consumer Internet data, it is necessary to provide a robust, reliable connection at a price point that can be justified in the business case for each application. Including multiple networking technologies in a home networking system requires multiple devices or at least multiple chipsets in devices in the network, is typically too cost prohibitive.
What is needed is a system and method that allows for single commonplace networking chipset, yet provides robust reception and transmission (transception) of data at low-latencies and high-bandwidth. The present invention satisfies that need.